Holidays Upon Ice

I am not one to lie about the troubles my family has had with the holidays. I am a fervent participant in all holiday goings on in our house and therefore am present for most of these mishaps. I am also a fervent supporter of the hilarity that can be found from witnessing these events firsthand.  It really doesn’t matter which holiday, St. Patrick’s, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Halloween, we decorate. Within each of these holidays is a horror story waiting to be told.

St. Patrick’s Day as you have probably already noticed hasn’t been in my good graces for long. So, when we put out our annual St. Patrick’s Day miniature flag, that’s all we do. Nothing would be fun about this if no one got hurt. My father, while attempting to try and replace this flag tripped on the brick wall that leads to our front lawn and well took the mini flag post with him. He had a bruise on his stomach for a few weeks. It was quite entertaining for my brother and I.

One Easter, after my brother and I had gotten our presents from the “Easter Bunny” and had successfully already begun to be bored of them decided it would be no fun to not remember all the fun we had. So off the garage went Matt to search for the video camera. As he was searching, I moved a dining room chair into the middle of the kitchen. With my present in hand, my Wild Thornberry’s dolls, we recreated the Wild Thornberry’s. I should have known this was a bad idea considering the time he flung me into a dresser at my grandparents but alas, I didn’t. Nevertheless, Matt decided to make it interesting and pushed back the chair upon which I sat. Away went me and the dolls and broken was the chair. Part of the broken chair went into my back and I had a long scab there for a few weeks. We weren’t allowed to play in the kitchen anymore. It was all caught on tape too.

Thanksgiving mishaps are my second love, the first being Christmas mishaps. However, this Thanksgiving mom and I got up really early to start making the cake and pie we were bringing. It was fun making a pie with my mom. As I was mixing the cake mix and the pie was successfully in the oven, we didn’t hear the timer, giving the pie and extra forty minutes to bake. Needless to say, the pie caught on fire and turned ash black. That year we just brought a cake.

Ah, Christmas. This year as my dad strung lights, he for some reason unbeknownst to me, had a staple gun in his hand. While he was standing on the ladder, staple gun in hand, he accidentally fell backward onto the carpeting allowing the staple gun to go off. The staple went through most of the tree but hit on string of lights in the fuse. The wires were fried and all the lights were done for. As dad cooled off from his mishap, mom and I took off all the lights (he had been on his last string) and threw them away. Dad and I took a trip to Target, CVS, Longs, Albertson’s, and Walgreen’s to no avail as we searched for clear tree lights. An hour and half later, we’re back with the clear lights. It takes another hour and a half to string them up. He fell off the ladder three other times. It was quite hysterical.

Everyone knows that Halloween means carved pumpkins right? Well my mom absolutely loves pumpkin carving. There isn’t much to imagine or describe here, but let’s just say that that year, the blood wasn’t fake.

So each year, for every holiday, we have mishaps. I guess it happens to all of us. My parents swear that half of this stuff never happened, but how fun would it be to deny them the real truth. When I remind them of these tales, I see them blushing as they deny it all. It intrigues me more that each year we spend our holidays on “ice” when we all know something bad is going to happen. I think they should just embrace that stuff happens.

It just usually happens to us.

During the holidays.

Kissing Magnets and Chocolate Peanut Brittle

My entire second grade experience was a blur to my excellence. I didn’t care much for the teacher or her other students. I wanted to be free and well, I wanted everyone to obey me. So I spent an entire year planning my total domination of the third grade. However, every perfect plan has one flaw, its doppelganger. His name just happened to be Noam, and he just happened to have chocolate covered peanut brittle. I bullied him into subservience, just an accomplice to my shenanigans that I could blame when something went wrong. What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with him.

It almost seemed wrong but wasn’t that how it was in the movies? A woman marries a man, man becomes King or something. Woman secretly kills man to become Queen. Queen gets a small, nerdy servant who turns into her lover and becomes the new King. But then of course, the new King dumps the new Queen. Our love started off nicely, he’d meet me by the trees at lunch, carry my milk pouch for me and clear my spot on the grass of leaves. The perfect gentleman. Occasionally I’d let him play with worms and bugs that wandered by us but other than that, he held my bag and book as I climbed my favorite tree. Noam would then hand me my book and I’d tell him to go away. And the cycle repeated everyday until he broke up with me.

It shouldn’t have mattered, we were seven! But alas, I missed my fateful assistant. I cowered everyday in my tree, hoping the yard duties would not see me hiding and allow me peace. I mean, I’d just be there again when they left and Candy liked me so she never cared. I sat in my tree, trying to focus on the book in hand only to keep knowing that he broke up with five days before my birthday. When my birthday came, he came up to my tree, handed me a carefully wrapped box and then walked away. Inside were four perfectly round glass magnets with flowers on the inside. They weren’t overly expensive or brilliant, but they filled my soul with so much joy.

At home, I displayed my magnets and would kiss each one every night before bed. My brother, Matt, would hoot and holler and say that I loved Noam. Of course, I would never admit such an act of betrayal to my impervious reputation for being emotionless which in turn helped me to cut in line during lunch, have other kids buy me pumpkin cookies during the holiday season, and quite possibly, a wide berth of freedom. I enjoyed my reputation and my power but what I didn’t enjoy was the loneliness. So I hung up my cold shoulder, and took off my armor. The next day at school, I “made” friends with a group of girls by following them around all day. Most of them found me exceptionally annoying. But one girl, obviously their leader, permitted me to stay, to continue to follow them.

Her name was Jillian and she permitted me much freedom when it came to following them but not quite enough to be part of the group. I guess it was because I invited them all over for a sleepover to which they all attended and found me kissing my magnets downstairs in the middle of the night. Or perhaps it was the time that I told my teacher that my grandmother had a heart attack in a movie theater that weekend when in fact I just saw it on the news. I guess it was just because I was weird.

I think things got worse the day Noam came back up to me toward the end of third grade. He held in his hands a box of chocolate covered peanut brittle and asked me to sit with him on the bench. I obliged, he was becoming quite the little tyrant that I once was. He said that he missed me and my book. That lunch was boring and no other girls treated him with the same respect. I wondered to myself what respect I had given this charming boy. Noam offered me his peanut brittle and I took the box and then left him alone on the bench.

The next day he left a note in my desk: can I come back? I didn’t say yes but I didn’t say no, I just threw it away. When he got to his desk that morning he pulled out a brown paper lunch sack and looked at me expectantly. I nodded in encouragement. He spilled the contents of the bag onto his desk. They were the magnets that he had gotten me. My brother and I had smashed them with a hammer the night before. Noam began to sob for some reason and came over to me. He asked why I had done it. “I’m tired of kissing magnets.” I said. He looked at me puzzled. “And I’m tired of your peanut brittle!” I shouted and stormed off. Yet somehow, chocolate peanut brittle is my favorite holiday snack. In fact, my box is right here.

You Will Never Make It as a Leprechaun

By the time first grade came around, I had grown up from my elementary pranks, I was a real prankster and I could get anyone, at anytime, anywhere. My next victim had been briefed on me, how to “manage” me. Of course, all her attempts at subservience failed her and I remained glorious. Perhaps it was the time we drew animals in class and I commented on my friend Olivia’s cat, “that is not a cat, you can’t draw”. Of course, Olivia cried, who wouldn’t? I walked away pleased that I had been honest with my friend to have a sobbing Olivia and an angered teacher approach me minutes later. The teacher would ask if I insulted Olivia’s picture to which I would be honest again. She told me to apologize, that it just wasn’t nice. But what did she expect me to do? Lie to my friends? That in itself would just weaken my very existence. I promptly responded, “But I’m not sorry, her cat sucks.”

Or maybe it was when we were writing journals and I would only draw pictures on the top of the page instead of actually write. Perhaps I was remiss to the fact that you actually had to write words in a journal or I just didn’t care. Whichever it was happened to work fine for me until I started to write and then well, I just couldn’t stop enlightening the world with my poetic writing. I was a very vain child as you’ve probably noticed. This is not as I am now but then, it all revolved around me, it didn’t matter who you were unless of course, you were my mom.

My mom was always the person in power in my mind, I didn’t care who you were or for how long you were watching me, I listen to my mom. Now don’t get me wrong, I disobeyed her several times over and over but it never changed her status. Perhaps I deserved more severe punishments or parents but my parents are awesome. Trust me though; my mom had her own tactics when it came to my tricks. She always knew when I’d lie because she always told me that it was written across my face. On days when I would stare into the bathroom mirror for hours she knew. And together we both knew that my first grade teacher, well she was just straight up crazy. There were no lies, tricks or jokes about it.

It could have been the times every day when she would pull me out of class and say that she feared that I just wasn’t going to make it to second grade. What did I need to do? Make up some macaroni posters, a few cotton ball sheep? Possibly read a book with three words on each page for homework. Some simple addition maybe? How about taking shorter naps? What did she really expect me to do? What are you really learning in first grade? In kindergarten you learned your rules and your alphabet and were practically already reading. First grade was just where you wrote words and read books while drawing pictures of animals that did not look like cats.

I believe it all began in the month of March, when learning about St. Patrick’s Day. She explained to us that this day was sacred and special because if you lured tiny little men in green with red hair whom we would later in fifth grade come to call Irish, you would get a surprise. That if you successfully captured them that not only would they give you their pot of gold but grant you any wishes you wanted. And so began the Leprechaun traps. Mine was a giant box with many levels painted green with gold coins glued to the outside. Inside it was almost like a condo, it had two levels, and one had two rooms with a plastic cell door that would close if the rubber band was taken off its hook on the wall. Surprisingly enough, none of those doors were triggered. On the first floor, there was a door, and a small pot of plastic gold. The door was triggered to if slightly touched to slam shut and not open. Of course, things never work.

So in the end, the damn Leprechauns took my gold and left tiny sticker foot prints. I found later, searching through her desk drawers, all our pots of gold, and that she was the Leprechaun that got away. When she caught me, I looked up at her and said, “You will never make it as a Leprechaun” before walking away shaking my head as she had done every day. 

Elementary School Safety Scissors

To tell you how all this began would be quite simple. To explain how my world was created. We all know how a child is born, but now I’m taking things way too technically. How all of this began, this entire book, this story that seems like a teenage girl being melodramatic, when in reality, she sees everyone else to be melodramatic. But all this began with a simple attraction, the simple boy meets girl, or reversed. I met this boy in approximately third grade from what I remember. I still adamantly believed in the cootie disease and wasn’t much of– well, much of anything for a seven year old –but mostly, I wasn’t a people person. Of people, I was terrified.

I was small, the normal height for any third grader. My once long blonde hair was now shorter and turning brown with age. I had almost no freckles on my face, a few on my arms though. And while other kids were focused on playing games and finding their birthmarks, I was in a corner, humming loudly to myself and gripping the only birthmark I knew I had. It was a large brown spot on the top of my wrist, and it would have looked like someone spilled coffee on my wrist. It intrigued me; I would ask myself questions I could never answer. They were questions like, how did it get there? Why do I have it? Why is it in that spot? Is that the color my skin could have been? Or was it just me believing in magical realms beyond the fireplace? I never knew.

It was not hard to predict where I may be or what I was doing. I would sit or stand in a corner or away from the other kids. I was humming and staring at my wrist or at the other kids. I was predictable. I found noises annoying and people who were mean to me were stupid and automatic enemies. But that sounds like every third grader I’ve met. To be a “normal” kid and to be a “weird” kid was like the age difference of 2 to 17. They were “normal”, they played a laughed and talked, they did normal things. I was “weird”; I was quiet and kept to myself. I was “weird” because I threatened people with safety scissors.

I knew then that people were afraid of me as I know now; it’s almost been my life long advantage. I could threaten moms with safety scissors and still be able to use my blue crayon; I could threaten kids with glue in their hair during nap time for their ABC blocks. I could even threaten the teacher to not send me to the office. Now, many of my tricks worked, I was a devious and frugal child who fed off attention as many kids in kindergarten did, but most of my tricks left me punished. This punishment was always dished out in equal parts by a) the teacher and b) the principal. To say that I had nothing up my sleeve for them too would leave you quite mistaken. See, I could get in and out of every situation, a ninja if you would, a five year old ninja.

After one particularly exciting day of painting, I decided that the meager five year old slaves beneath me needed to be punished and worked to the bone. So I took the meter stick (which was then used as a pointer), grabbed a chair and placed it selectively in the middle of the passage way to where the blocks were and where they had to play. Each time a kid passed my fateful blockade, they were whacked on the head. Kids began to cry and uproar began but those meager kids were nothing compared to my greatness and power known as a chair and meter stick. The teacher, a forty year old woman with white blond hair rushed out to the crying and screaming of her students to yell at me only to get herself whacked on the head.  Nevertheless, the principal was called to haul me away like a tyrant to their execution to where I was promptly sat in a chair next to the secretary and told to, “stay”.

Another one of my passions has always been to disobey adults’ rules, an anarchist if you will. So being told to “stay” was revolting to my glorious five year old tyrant presence. I simply disobeyed and rolled underneath the secretary’s desk while she was out of the room. She came back, yelled at me that this wasn’t funny and then sat back at her desk assuming the principal would deal with me soon. As she filed papers mindlessly and uselessly, I tied her shoes together and when I was satisfied, bit her in the leg. After which, I bolted from the room as she stood, screamed and fell over. Once back in my classroom, all the flames of my tyranny gone, the teacher asked me what punishment the principal gave me, to which I responded, “Oh, he just said not to do it again,” and then sat in my chair as if nothing had happened. 

This Story

This story is about my life and the crazy things that have happened as I grew up. It seems conceited and vain but most things in my life are really crazy and hectic. At first this project started off on me writing a book about certain aspects of my life but as I wrote and the more stories that came up, writing a blog of short pieces seemed to fit best. One of my classmates in English had started a blog quite recently about being a pile and how his friends saw him as one. I found it interesting that he shared this blog with our teacher because we thought of our class as full of them. Now don't get me wrong, I am in no way copying his idea for a blog because I'm bored or need to seek attention from my teacher, I just want to get my stuff out there.

This story started out as a book that would talk about me and how I felt I belonged nowhere and at the beginning I felt that I didn't belong anywhere. But as I wrote and the things that happened along the way, like losing my two guiding lights from high school as they graduated and the love of my pre-teen to early teen years killed herself, I realized through my new found friend Julia, that maybe I do belong. I realized that maybe I don't need to seem like another melodramatic teenager who hates her life because her parents don't like her boyfriend or was caught smoking pot. A teen who wanted to drink and party and explore and just have fun. In all realities, my parents would love it if I got a boyfriend, they'd be happy to watch me go to a party even if it meant there might be drugs and alcohol. They'd be happy because I was and am not a very social person. To those who know me, this seems quite impossible but it's true. I don't think pot is okay even if it you supposedly can't die from it. The thought of beer or tequila or scotch is absolutely revolting to me.

So these are my letters, these are my stories from random places. This is my hidden cabinet, what I rarely share with people and random life points.

So this story, my story, is hoped to bring you immense pleasure and is meant for one thing and one thing only: to be enjoyed.